“We wanted this to feel different than any of our [prior] homes,” Aymee Kuhlman, cofounder of Oregon-based design firm Light and Dwell, says of the three-bedroom cottage in the forest outside Portland that she shares with her husband, Jim. After their adult children moved away, the couple wanted an oasis-like living space that fit their new empty nester lifestyle and was mostly on one level. The house they found in spring 2021 was “on a beautiful lot, but it didn’t have a ton of character,” she continues, so in the fall of that year, she called her business partner, designer Molly Kidd, to help give it some love.
Having Kuhlman as a client allowed Kidd a bit more room for experimentation than she usually gets. The pair have been friends since Kuhlman mentored Kidd during graduate school and know each other’s style preferences well. After the firm did a gut renovation to replace all electrical, mechanical, and plumbing systems while rearranging the interior architecture of the two-story home, the team added bold paint colors, scalloped marble fireplace mantels, and a checkerboard bathroom, among other flourishes. Today, the project embodies a Pacific Northwest meets English countryside aesthetic: “The design direction for this project was really a combination of Oregon cottage Tudor and our typical European styles,” Kidd reflects.
With the surrounding wood as an inspirational starting point, Kidd decided to go all-in and chose Dunn-Edwards’s Smoky Forest as the primary interior color: It can be found on the locally made English-style kitchen cabinetry, the walls of a punchy powder room, and trimming all the windows, to which Light and Dwell added grids for more of a Tudor feel. “Green is really a signature color for us, and we consider it a neutral,” the designer explains. What may have seemed to be “pushing the envelope” for another client was just the right choice for Kuhlman.
The same sentiment is exemplified in the eat-in kitchen, a bit unusual in contemporary design, which here solidifies the room as a significant gathering place in line with the family’s casual entertaining style. A large wooden table with vintage chairs holds court at its center, and a custom white oak built-in china cabinet displays heirloom dishware. Evening conversations can be had over drinks in the open-plan living and dining room, where Farrow & Ball’s Deep Reddish Brown sets a cozy backdrop to large picture windows with vistas of the Oregon woodlands. For summertime get-togethers, a new deck provides a space to get even closer to the trees.
The private areas of the house were designed for comfort. An arched doorway (with Smoky Forest–painted trim) leads to the primary suite on the first floor, where the spa-like bathroom features a silvery tiled wet room with a shower and standalone tub. Their brass Waterworks fittings are matched on the double vanity with its Carrara marble countertop. In the bedroom, two oval-shaped windows allow a peek into nature, while the custom wood bed with a scalloped headboard adds an antique whimsy. Floor-length curtains cover a wall of doors for a true indoor-outdoor living experience.
Kidd feels one of the home’s biggest design risks is in the secondary bathroom. A checkered pattern of light brown and white glazed clay tiles covers the shower and floor for a delightful allover effect. In combination with cabinetry and baseboards painted in Benjamin Moore’s Baked Cumin, the room is an exercise in how to give historically inspired decor a current feel.
“We’ve got broccoli, brown, dark red, and cumin…and at first, we were a bit like, ‘Oh, God, buckle up.’ But now, I just love them,” Kuhlman says of the saturated scheme. “It’s a lot of color. And it’s beautiful because it really highlights the view.”
